Police focus on crew of missing Malaysian plane
Print Edition
MALAYSIAN police have ruled out involvement of any passengers in the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.
Authorities have not ruled out mechanical problems, but say all the evidence suggests the plane was deliberately diverted from its scheduled route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8.
Malaysia’s police chief said the investigation was focusing on the cabin crew and pilots, after clearing all 227 passengers of possible involvement in hijacking, sabotage or having personal or psychological problems that could have been connected to the disappearance.
“They have been cleared,” national police chief Khalid Abu Bakar was quoted as saying by state news agency Bernama.
“Investigations may go on and on and on. We have to clear every little thing,” he told reporters. “At the end of the investigations, we may not even know the real cause. We may not even know the reason for this incident.”
Police are also investigating the cargo and the food served on the plane to eliminate possible poisoning of passengers and crew, he said.
Meanwhile, Australian officials warned that bad weather and a lack of reliable information were impeding efforts to find wreckage from the plane.
Up to 10 planes and nine ships from a half dozen countries yesterday scoured a stretch of the Indian Ocean roughly the size of Britain, where flight MH370 is believed to have crashed more than three weeks ago.
The search and rescue teams are in a race against time to locate the plane’s black box recorder, which has an expected battery life of around 30 days.
Retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, head of the Australian agency coordinating the operation, said that a lack of reliable flight telemetry and punishing conditions at sea were making the operation even more challenging.
“In other words, we don’t have a precise aircraft location for six hours before the aircraft went into the water somewhere,” he said in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“The reality is it’s the most complex and challenging search and rescue operation, or search and recovery operation now, that I’ve ever seen.”
Broken clouds, sea fog and isolated thunderstorms were expected to further complicate operations, Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Center said.
In a radio interview, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said: “We owe it to the world, we owe it to those families, to do whatever we reasonably can do to get to the bottom of this.”
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak was expected to arrive in Perth late yesterday to inspect search and rescue operations conducted out of RAAF Base Pearce north of the city.
Most of the 239 people on board the flight were Chinese and scores of relatives are staying in hotels in Beijing and Kuala Lumpur.
Authorities organized a closed-door briefing in Kuala Lumpur for the families with officials and experts involved in the hunt, including the chief of the Malaysian air force. It was relayed by video to relatives in Beijing.
Malaysia’s civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman said officials answered all questions raised and that they had “a very good meeting.”
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